Last Wednesday Wolf Blitzer asked White House correspondent John King if White House officials were pushing any “weird aspects” of Richard Clarke’s life which would hurt his credibility. There have been a lot of theories as to what Blitzer was talking about, mainly centering on Clarke being unmarried. When Paul Krugman mentioned it in his latest column Blitzer finally responded. He claims he was talking about an interview he had with James Wilkinson, Deputy National Security Advisor in which Wilkinson said:

Let me also point something. If you look in this book, you find interesting things such as reported in “The Washington Post” this morning. He’s talking about how he sits back and visualizes chanting by bin Laden and how bin Laden has some sort of mind control over U.S. officials. This is sort of “X-Files” stuff.

And what I’d say is, this is a man who was in charge of terrorism, Wolf, who was supposed to be focused on that. And he was focused on meetings.

I think he misspoke there at the end- the one thing Clarke couldn’t get with Bush was a meeting on counter-terrorism.

As for the “X-Files” allegations- here’s the quote from the book, the topic is the inevitable invasion of Iraq:

It was as if Usama bin Laden, hidden in some high mountain redoubt, were engaging in long range mind control of George Bush, chanting ‘invade Iraq, you must invade Iraq.’

In other words, attacking Iraq is exactly what Osama wanted. Anyone who reads that as Clarke claiming there was actual mind control going on is a moron. Yes, you heard me- James Wilkinson is a moron. Wolf Blitzer is just another empty headed anchor, regurgitating the revolting White House spin.